White Noise
by Lexie Jayne
Summary: They don’t sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last. Jondy & Zack.
1. Lovers

**Title:** White Noise

**Author:** Lexie Jayne

**Fandom:** Dark Angel

**Characters:** Jondy, Zack

**Prompt:** Lovers

**Word Count:** 777

**Rating:** PG

**Summary:** They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.

**Author's Notes:** A back story and continuation to my one-shot _Let Go_. The idea niggled at me. Each part uses a prompt as given by fanfic100 at livejournal.

* * *

**I. Lovers**

_You, and you alone, can break my heart._

All of his brothers and sisters were glad to see him home – home was wherever they were together, after all, and no one commented on how sorry his return came at a time when transgenics were being taken out, one by one. Terminal City is held up by the sheer force of Max and her followers; desperation and self-preservation are the reason that they've lasted this long, nothing else.

Her hair is long and red now, and she still wears perfume that smells like lilies. He holds her a split second longer, and breathes in her scent of perfume, sweat and something distinctively female, akin to talcum powder and chocolate. There's something there that's new to him.

He remembers finding her in a back alley of Chicago when she was fourteen, a curvy, soft girl who would be better off at the mall or in school than picking the pockets of the struggling citizens of Chicago.

Now, she is not the dark haired child from the streets – in all truth, the last time he saw her, her hair was blonde. Red hair cut shorter than before, her skin is stretched thin over the sharp angles of her bones; her hips jut out from her body in a way that almost scares him. He grabs her by the shoulder and relishes how soft she still is. She is still her fourteen year old self, just taller, he knows now.

Her eyes are harder, but she still laughs easily, and it's still easy to fold her into a hug, to stroke her hair. It's easy to comfort her as a brother; he did it for a decade before now – he goes through the motions with practiced ease.

The Ordinaries are getting restless, and the transgenics line the hiding places to watch the military examine Terminal City. She sits in front of him, his hands resting on her shoulders, her head resting against his arm.

No matter what their family thinks or knows, he knows that it was that night he took her to an unused building up the back of Terminal City, pressed her against the wall and kissed her, loved her. The look of her flushed cheeks is a kind of beautiful he's never noticed before, and when he does, he knows the time he lost on the farm in the Midwest has turned him into someone different. He is not Zack but he's not Adam either.

He likes the way she understands, and doesn't seek him out when they're with the others. She stands by his side, and tilts her head to the side and reads his expression like a book. She unnerves him simply by knowing him.

It's Max that finds them. She's sitting on a table in his quarters, her long legs wrapped around his waist, her arms around his neck, and her head thrown back. He's enjoying every second, but Max looks on with a shocked expression, and it makes him feel better that he can still keep things from Maxie.

When the US Army begins to bomb the transgenics, they head underground, to the unused sewer systems and basements of the buildings, where they plot their survival in an America that has no money and no freedom even for the most perfect citizen.

In the late afternoons, he steals her away, back to his old quarters. His bedding remains there, untouched since the escape from the surface. She curls into his arms easily, tilting her head back for another kiss. He traces the scars on her stomach, and strokes the almost powdery skin of her inner thigh.

Sweat glistens on her body as he rolls off her, tracing her cheek bone. Her eyes are closed and she breathes heavily. She smells like him, like sweat, and like her perfume. They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.

* * *


	2. Strangers

**Title:** White Noise

**Author:** Lexie Jayne

**Fandom:** Dark Angel

**Characters:** Jondy, Zack

**Prompt:** Strangers

**Word Count:** 1 037

**Rating:** PG

**Summary:** They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.

**Author's Notes:** A back story and continuation to my one-shot _Let Go_. The idea niggled at me. Each part uses a prompt as given by fanfic100 at livejournal.

Dedicated to ZombieGurl98 for the nicest review I think I've ever received.

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**II. Strangers.**

Jondy is avoiding him, and he doesn't know why.

She doesn't sleep so she has an advantage over him – she takes guard duty during the night, and when he seeks her out during daylight hours, she is busy with Alec or Zane or someone else.

Or she's sleeping, pale and sickly-looking in her corner, and he doesn't want to wake her. That would be almost cruel. He leaves her cups of water or sweet tea when he can, to try and convince her to at least talk to him and explain why she cannot look at him any longer.

She accepts his offerings, but turns her face away from him when he comes near her, looking for more work. Her body is still the frail looking frame of the past months, and in the back of his mind, he worries about her.

She goes on a supply run with Alec – a mission that involves explosives, and weapons, and more luck than anyone can wish for in a life time. Her red hair is tucked up under a black cap, and she offers him a think smile as she slides the magazine into the gun and moves out.

He's got guard duty while she's gone; he hasn't got the time to worry about her. When she gets back, she takes over, placing her hand on his cheek (her fingerless gloves are rough against his cheek; her fingers are so soft) and she kisses him gently.

And he is confused. It's easy to cover his confusion by dragging her back up to the seemingly abandoned Terminal City, and having her in an apartment where the wooden floor has rotted away. She cries out his name, and he rests his head on her shoulder and realises he's still confused.

Its weeks later, and he's on guard duty and she's gone off with Alec to secure drinking water and medical supplies for them. He wonders briefly if Alec and Jondy are having an affair, as they seem to work together too much for them not to be. He remembers the early days when they'd go to do something – catalogue weapons or examine the structurally unsound buildings, and they'd have quiet sex before slipping back up to the Main Hall, faces flushed but a job well done.

These thoughts become traitorous as he sees Alec stumbling in, favouring his right ankle, his arm tightly around Jondy's waist, her arm around his shoulder. He's half dragging, half carrying her. Her face is whiter than he's ever seen it – he can see the veins running through her eyelids, bright, offensive blue.

"A bullet wound to the shoulder," Alec hisses as Krit scoops Jondy into his arm. "She's lost a hell of a lot of blood - took us ages to get out." He's got a broken ankle, the bone pressing against the skin, dangerously close to ripping the flesh.

Jondy is laid down in the First Aid corner, where her black shirt is cut off and discarded. Her shoulder is a gouged mess of black-red blood, and he kneels beside her, his fingers pressed to her pulse, which is still there.

It feels like hours before the medic-X6 pulls back, examining the fine, symmetrical stitches she's pulled Jondy's skin together with. A pint or two of Syl's blood is rushing around her veins, and her cheeks look a little pinker, but that might just be his optimism.

"Sit with her until she wakes up," the medic instructs him, handing him some water and her ruined shirt. "Clean her up a bit." Her entire torso is smeared with blood, and her face is covered in grime, a small cut under her eye still oozing blood.

He wipes the blood away from her face, her neck, and adjusts her faded, old bra that is now minus one strap so that they could patch up her shoulder. He dunks the garment into the dish of water and wipes the smears of blood away from her body. He stares at her blankly as the water in the bowl turns rust coloured, thinking – or brooding as she once teasingly said.

She doesn't tease him anymore and he really cannot think what he did or said to discern her of it. It was endearing, and he secretly likes the teasing from his siblings. It balances out all the times they call him an asshole. And they do that a hell of a lot.

He looks down at the still form of Jondy, and his brain catches up to what he's looking at. Her torso was always firm and muscled, her bust modest. But now he's _looking_ at her for the first time in weeks and what was once a toned, flat stomach bulges out just enough to grab his attention. And the noise in the background is turning to static.

Zack knows what this means, but sure as hell won't think about it until she comes to him; a fool-proof plan because none of the X5 women will ever approach a man for help. Their DNA practically has impossible levels of pride and independence written into it. She'll never come to him for anything; feminism has been taken to new heights thanks to his sisters. And Jondy.

Eventually, Syl offers to watch her for awhile, bringing him coffee and a small smile, thinking she sees her big brother in love. He snaps at her and her ridiculous assumptions, and leaves her with Jondy, who is still unconscious in the corner. He spends his night wondering what happens next.

* * *


	3. Friends

**Title:** White Noise

**Author:** Lexie Jayne

**Fandom:** Dark Angel

**Characters:** Jondy, Zack

**Prompt:** Friends.

**Word Count:** 1 319 words

**Rating:** PG

**Summary:** They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.

**Author's Notes:** A back story and continuation to my one-shot _Let Go_The idea niggled at me. Each part uses a prompt as given by fanfic100 at livejournal.

Thank you very much to HoneyX5-452, Montana Magic and ZombieGurl98 for your lovely reviews

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**III. Friends**

Jondy wakes up to Zane sitting by her bedside with a mug of cold, sugary tea and a concerned look on his face; she is wrapped in a grubby woollen blanket with more holes than fabric, sweat clinging to her skin like a thousand little bugs.

She accepts the tea cup, drinking greedily; cold tea with half a dozen heaped spoonfuls of sugar has always been her weakness. Something about it goes hand in hand with fluffy bath towels, flirty sundresses and a family history in photographs rather than pale, spidery scars.

Her head hurts as she regains her equilibrium, and realises she's clad only in her bra, which is now mysteriously missing one strap. She shakes her head slowly to clear it and looks at Zane, tugging the old blanket tighter around herself.

"What happened?" Her voice sounds scratchy, and the scent of blood hovers in the air.

Zane forces her to lie down again, and goes to get a medic to examine her. The blanket smells like cigar smoke and peppermint chewing gum, a scent that makes her want to vomit; something she's been doing a lot of lately. Alec laughs at her, but keeps her secret; Alec's like the brother she never had when she was growing up, her best friend, no matter how Max glowers at her or how Zack watches him.

Something falls into her lap – one of her tops, grey – and she looks up to Zack, with dark circles around his eyes and a grimace that makes him seem like he's in pain just by looking at her.

"Thought you might need this," he says gruffly and leaves her to struggle into the top with one arm patched together like an old pair of socks. The top is one of her favourites, the softest she owns, and she rationalises that if he went to the trouble of bringing it to her, he's not pissed at her.

Yet, of course. Alec keeps telling her to come clean.

The medic is back with a worried looking Zane. Her shoulder aches, but the medic assures her there is no infection and she'll be fine. Jondy pretends the word of a sixteen year old is reassuring, no matter who trained the kid. She leaves the medic corner and retreats to her own little area, with the curtain around it, where her blankets don't smell like cigars or artificial peppermint.

Her head still hurts. She lies down, slipping her hand under her jumper to rest her hand against the small bulge and hopes that nothing has gone wrong before she can make a decision about what to do. Alec's joked about passing the kid off as his, his eyes full of sympathy, but she doesn't need both Max and Zack's wrath falling upon her.

She curses herself an idiot for getting involved with Zack in the first place – CO, Alpha male, and all that sick shit that Manticore forced upon them by adding some feline DNA to the mix. She should've just left it at a few flirtations and some chaste kisses.

She snorts with laughter at the thought of 'chaste' and 'Zack' in the same sentence and wonders what the medic gave her; she's positively loopy. And she closes her eyes for just a bit.

She doesn't know how long she slept for but she wakes to a shadow falling over her. Zack. She knows him too well. He stands before him, the same grim expression across his face as earlier. She rolls over and looks up at him, with a small smile, and motions for him to lie down beside her. She doesn't expect him to, but he does, their hair mingling on the beat up pillow. He rests his hand on her arm and she closes her eyes, hissing.

He knows. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Waking up half naked didn't really clue her in, but it does now as he lies beside her, his chin on her shoulder. The curtain separating them from the prying eyes of the rest of Terminal City.

Weakness is a human trait, she can admit that freely now. Doesn't mean either of them have to display it to a room full of virtual strangers.

Neither of them have said a word.

Zack pulls himself up hours later; she's dozing, letting sleep heal, but he has guard duty. Her red hair – longer and darker red that when she first arrived in Terminal City, tangled and sticking to her sweaty face. He covers her in a blanket and leaves to keep watch.

She joins him hours later, carrying some dented cans of soft drink, and wearing clean clothes. Her hair is scraped back into a ponytail, which only makes her eyes seems bluer. She hands him the drink and pulls a packet of biscuits from her jacket pocket.

"Slim pickings tonight," she offers him a ghost of a smile and he somehow manages to return it, as she rips them open and takes one. He follows her lead, and takes a bite into them. Stale, chocolate and cherry flavoured, and they both simultaneously spit the offending biscuits out.

"That was disgusting," she winces, taking a large sip of her drink. "God, where does Alec find this shit?"

"How far along are you?"

Silence. If there were crickets in Terminal City, Zack is positive he would be able to hear them about now. He didn't mean to say that, but nothing else they'll talk about seems as important.

The expression on her face can only be described as unhappy, and she tips some of her drink out, letting it splash onto her boots. "Fifteen weeks. When did you work it out?"

"When the medic was stitching you up yesterday." A lie, but only by a few hours. Little details can be lost in the face of this disaster. "Does anyone know?"

"Alec… he helped me find a doctor who I could trust." She shrugs; her shoulders still look thin underneath her sweatshirt. "I think Syl's guessed, but she was with Tinga."

She looks very small standing there, looking at the ground and her now-sticky boots. He is reminded of the little dark haired girl she once was and reaches out for her, resting his hand on her shoulder. Her face tilts upwards, her eyes sad.

They both recognise this as The Moment; no turning back. They aren't siblings anymore – they are too far gone for that anymore. He was a fairly crappy brother to her anyway, he thinks. They were never each other's significant other or 'partner'; the words _girlfriend_ and _boyfriend _aren't apart of Zack's vocabulary, and it would require a level of affection that neither of them think that they're capable of.

And they won't be lovers anymore, because they've fucked that up spectacularly. Zack can't help but wonder how badly they'll do as parents to the baby. They'll have to be friends now, because she knows him too well and he knows her not well enough.

He hugs her tight and she rests her head on his shoulder and reminds herself that she never thought this would last, and feels ashamed to wish she'd never come to Terminal City. She is not fit to be a mother, not now or ever, and this was never part of her plan.

And she turns around and vomits into the gutters of Terminal City, he brushes her hair off her face like a friend would. And she vomits some more.

* * *


	4. Birth

**Title:** White Noise

**Author:** Lexie Jayne

**Fandom:** Dark Angel

**Characters:** Jondy, Zack

**Prompt:** Birth

**Word Count:** 887

**Rating:** PG

**Summary:** They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.

**Author's Notes:** A back story and continuation to my one-shot _Let Go_. The idea niggled at me. Each part uses a prompt as given by fanfic100 at livejournal.

* * *

**IV. Birth**

Her face is white and red, and her eyes seem to swallow her face whole; she has taken on an almost waxy quality now, sweat lighting her face, strands of her red hair sticking to her face. She cries out in pain every few minutes, but there is none of the screaming he envisaged; just a strained, pale face, eyes that seemed to be burnt into her skull and a look thrown at him that made him leave her and the medic alone.

She's lucky; she's not in the basement-sewer shanty town but in a small, almost clean room in a building nestled in the heart of Terminal City. The idea of having her baby down in the filth, only a thin curtain separating her from the rest of the transgenics had haunted Jondy from the first moment the medic had mentioned it.

But she's away from all of that, alone with a medic who's five years younger than she is. Zack waits with Zane outside the room, his face drawn, as they wait in silence.

The look she shot him before he left the room was one of regret, pain and frustration. Her blue eyes were hard and bitter, and he couldn't remember her ever glaring at him like that before. He's turned his back on her emotions before, and this time is no different.

Zane stands with Zack for hours, in utter silence. He genuinely wonders why Zack is here, whether he feels responsible for Jondy's position, whether he actually truly loves both her and the baby, or some ingrained sense of duty that would mean he would be waiting whether it was Jondy behind the door, or Max, or Syl.

They wait for hours longer, tensing at the odd cry of pain emitted from the room. And then, there's a stillness in the air, and the tiny brown haired medic pokes her head through the door.

"You can come in now, if you want," she says very calmly; the medic has an almost eerie manner – one that looks straight into their soul and reads all their lies and secrets. Zack never feels more inadequate as a soldier and as an X5 as when he is faced with the Manticore experiments that didn't run for their lives.

Both men step forward. The room smell mostly of blood, and there is a plastic laundry tub in the corner, lined with the cleanest sheets they could find, and Zack can see the tiniest child that has ever crossed his path. The infant is still, but has think dark blonde hair sticking to his scalp. He breathes softly, and Zack feels a rush of … emotion? Protectiveness? ... For the tiny person.

She was curled up, wrapped in her clean pyjamas – a worn, soft t shirt that may or may not have been Krit's at one point, and some cut-off sweatpants. Her face was still a knotted spider's web around her face, her eyes looking more like bruises with her exhaustion.

Zane kneels beside her and takes her hand in both of his, rubbing it gently, and pushing her hair off of her clammy face. She offers him the ghost of a smile and he just knows this was never part of the plan; that this was never on the list of things Jondy wanted out of life. But X5s are designed to recover quickly from whatever life deals them, and this is no exception.

But X5s are designed to recover quickly from whatever life deals them, and this is no exception.

The medic is holding the baby, seemingly aware Zack will not reach for his own child, rocking it back and forth. Zane strokes Jondy's hair off her face as she dozes on the floor, Zack staring at the baby.

"What's its name?" Zane asks, his voice sounding almost vulgar in the silence of the room.

"She said he could pick out a name," the medic looked at Zack with that irritating knowing look. Zack stared at the baby sleeping in her arms.

"Is it a girl?"

"A boy," the medic stroked the baby's cheek.

Zane watches Zack expectantly, just like when they were kids, and Zack wishes someone would take all of this away from him, banish it from his mind. But the infant yawns and Zack wonders if this isn't going to be the disaster it could've been.

"Adam," Zack decides; the choice was between Ben, the brother he failed, and Adam, the person whom he never had the chance to be. But Ben means too many regrets and too much pain, and Adam seems redemptive.

He doesn't hold the baby, but sits on the other side of Jondy. The medic, still rocking the baby to sleep – Adam – watches the tableau of the two men, a brother watching his sister sleep, and a man watching his lover sleep.

And Adam sleeps.

* * *


	5. Parents

**Title:** White Noise

**Author:** Lexie Jayne

**Fandom:** Dark Angel

**Characters:** Jondy, Zack

**Prompt:** Parents

**Word Count:** 875

**Rating:** PG

**Summary:** They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.

**Author's Notes:** A back story and continuation to my one-shot _Let Go_. The idea niggled at me. Each part uses a prompt as given by fanfic100 at livejournal.

* * *

**V. Parents**

Her face is white, with purple-black half moons underneath her eyes. Her hair, still red but duller, is twisted on top of her head, and her lips are dry and chapped. The baby lies in her arms, sleeping amongst the bundle of blankets.

Max shakes her head and leaves Jondy alone. It's easier and safer than sending out a distracted soldier. The others offer to help so that she can sleep, and she'll take them up on that offer. She just doesn't sleep well; her body aches with a cold, bone-deep exhaustion, she's distracted and her eyes never want to close.

She's been given a new mission – to Keep the Baby Quiet. Not just from Max and Zack, either. But from many yelling residents when her son wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, when his heartfelt sobs go on longer than a few minutes. It's easier to stay awake and hold him because then she can just know when something is going to go wrong.

She never wanted to be a mother, and she's realising all her worst fears about babies are true. There is no pleasure for her when her little boy opens his eyes and coos up at her. There is no pleasure when he sleeps in her arms, little fingers curled around hers. Her independence, adaptability, intelligence and spontaneity – all the things that made the X5s so great – have been compromised. She questions Tinga's choices in the long nights free of sleep and relaxation. Did Tinga truly love her life or did she just thing she was expected to love all she had?

Zack doesn't know how to approach her. She grips the baby like an anchor to life. The girl – the woman – he found himself so drawn to has faded into the background; she is not the bright girl whose presence was known the second she walked into a room. Now she is easily forgotten.

He doesn't know what prompted him to go to her one night, with a mug of tea in one hand and a plate of food in the other. Supplies were more limited than ever, and he – well, Syl – had managed to scrounge up a rather haphazard meal for the both of them; rice cakes, noodles and a few squares of overcooked toast. Alec would have to take Zane and make another supply run sooner or late; the last one had bordered on being unsuccessful.

"Hey."

"Hey." She shifts the baby in her arms, and he lets out a gurgle of contentment. He really doesn't know what to say, but puts the tea and food on top of the crate she uses as a table and sits beside her. He reaches for the baby and she resists for a moment, giving him a bleary eyed look of confusion before she releases Adam into his arms and sits back. Her limbs are stiff, her clothes are coated with filth and sweat, and his mind winces at the cracking sound as she stretches her arms and legs, twisting her neck around on her shoulders.

"Go take a shower," he says, looking at her as she rifles through her things for a clean sweatshirt. Adam wriggles in his arms, and Zack grips his son tighter.

She blinks at him, her responses sluggish with lack of sleep over the last few weeks, and gathers some clean clothes into a bundle before slipping away to where some make shift showers have been rigged up.

Adam stares up at him, gurgling at his father, his tiny fists waving in the air. He's so tiny, so alive, and for a moment, Zack feels utter terror for the fact he is responsible for this tiny person, for another life.

Jondy returns, her hair braided tightly back, in cleaner clothes, and looking better than she has for days. She dumps her clothes into one corner and reaches for the mug of tea and some food. She eats quickly, with the speed of someone who has skipped many meals in many days. He feels the heat of guilt rise up as she wipes her hands on her pants and reaches for Adam.

"Thanks Zack."

Zack watches as she folds her legs underneath as a reflex. He's reluctant to hand Adam over; the baby feels more real in his arms and he's jealous this is something Jondy's had for so long already.

"You need to get some sleep," he says, motioning to her makeshift bed. "And Adam needs to learn to sleep in a bed."

"He cries when I put him down," Jondy grabs a clean blanket for Adam. "Really, it's okay Zack."

"He'll only get worse if you keep holding him, Jon. And your seizures will get worse if you don't sleep." Or eat, he mentally adds.

He knows he's won when she breaks eye contact and tugs off her boots. There's an old basket lined with towels for Adam's bed.

It takes both Jondy and Adam only moments to fall asleep, and for the first time in a very long time, Zack lies beside Jondy, his arm around her waist, and sleeps. When Adam stirs, the cry dies in his throat as his father picks him up and Jondy sleeps on.

* * *


	6. Enemies

**Title:** White Noise

**Author:** Lexie Jayne

**Fandom:** Dark Angel

**Characters:** Jondy, Zack

**Prompt:** Enemies.

**Word Count: **679

**Rating:** T

**Summary:** They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.

**Author's Notes:** A back story and continuation to my one-shot _Let Go_. The idea niggled at me. Each part uses a prompt as given by fanfic100 at live journal. My hard drive died and has been replaced, so huffah! Back to regularly scheduled updates.

* * *

**VI. Enemies**

After Adam was born, their relationship was different. They both recognised that, but pushed it aside. There was more to worry about than sex and love when the people who created you were training armies to destroy you.

Jondy's working for their cause harder than ever, laptop close by and gun at her hip. Her hair, dyed back to the deep red that he remembers caught his eye so long ago. But she's not the same person he was so taken with all those months ago. She is a different, harder, most distant girl, and she pulls away from them all. Even Adam, who is crawling, has a hard time cracking the mask she wears.

They lie stiffly next to each other at night, and he wonders when she started sleeping so much. She wonders when he stopped knowing her and hates herself for wishing for a time back before Adam, whose gorgeous baby smiles and giggles are reserved only for his father. She is fucking tired and she wants to walk away so bad now.

Zack's found a pretty X6 with strawberry blonde curls and a coy look perfected from hours of studying Ordinaries. She smiles at him, her whole attention on the Commanding Officer of the X5 unit, and ignores Jondy's glowers from the corner as the little X6 balances Jondy's baby on her hip and rests her hand against Zack's arm.

She throws her unloaded gun against the concrete wall in temper, and cracks the casing, which just serves to piss Max off, and startle Adam, and she wants to scream bloody murder at anyone who crosses her path.

Her salvation is found in Alec, with his hard eyes and sarcastic nature. And for the first time, the man in her life isn't a lover or a brother, just a friend. He drags her out on runs for supplies, taking his sweet time and letting her gulp in the fresh air and take in the space that is outside the underground transgenic hideout. She returns with flushed cheeks, all smiles and energy, and Zack wants to hit Alec for bringing that sort of smile to Jondy's face.

They barely talk anymore. They snip at each other, muttered insults and barbed remarks delivered with poisonous smiles, with their siblings looking on, grim looks on their faces.

It gets worse when Adam gets sick, his face flushed unnaturally, curled in his mother's grip, his little face shiny with sweat. Jondy takes him into the fresh air, wiping his tiny, baby face as he whimpers and cries at her.

"I'm so sorry, baby," she whispers at him, hating herself for not preventing her baby from getting sick, for not loving him more, for not being the perfect mother and for being generally fucked up. He grabs a fistful of her cherry red hair and dribbles down her shirt. She closes her eyes and wishes she knew normal things, like how to bring down a baby's fever, instead of weird things like how to build a nuclear bomb. She claps her cold hand over his forehead and Adam falls into dribbly, baby sleep, so still that her heart pounds loudly in her ears, and losing him is so much worse that she wants to cry for ever wanting him to just not be.

"Shouldn't be out here."

She turns around to see Zack, standing behind her, almost defensively.

"I'm a grown woman, Zack," she half hisses, like the cat she is.

"I'm not talking about you. You're not my problem, Jondy," he replies icily. "I'm talking about Adam. I'm taking him back down."

He plucks their baby from her arms and leaves her standing alone, in a baby drool-covered top, her heart on her sleeve and a deep pain in her chest that they can't even look at each other anymore. Where the fuck did they go wrong?

Zack has taken Adam, and moved the makeshift crib and his things away from hers, and she lies awake all night, alone, and listens to her sleeping boys breathe, so close by.

* * *


	7. Family

**Title:** White Noise

**Author:** Lexie Jayne

**Fandom:** Dark Angel

**Characters:** Jondy, Zack

**Prompt:** Family.

**Word Count: **776

**Rating:** T

**Summary:** They don't sleep, but lie next to each other and pretend that what they have is normal, and what they have will last.

**Author's Notes:** A back story and continuation to my one-shot _Let Go_. The idea niggled at me. Each part uses a prompt as given by fanfic100 at live journal. My hard drive died and has been replaced, so huffah! Back to regularly scheduled updates.

The next chapter is the final chapter, and I'm still on the fence whether to make the ending happy or angsty. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

* * *

**VI. Family**

The ground shakes, another bomb hits. He can hear the buildings coming down on the surface, and transgenics are calling out and running and huddling in corners together. They'd gotten careless – trying to move back into the buildings of Terminal City rather than the underground shanty town they've inhabited for the last two years. They're paying for their lack of judgement now, as the injured and dead are carried into the corner.

Those still alive and uninjured hurry around, trying to do something, their faces white and grey with fear they haven't felt in a long time.

"Max, Max, where's Jondy?" Zack grabs his sister by the arm, his eyes worried as others dash around them, trying to reinforce the sewers as hairline cracks appeared in the roof.

Max blinks. "She was … she was walking with Adam." He'd seen her earlier, her hair pinned up on her head, Adam's tiny hands clinging to her fingers as he stumbled along, gazing up at the cloudy sky, his blonde hair hanging in his eyes.

"I'll check the injured and the bodies," Max says, her eyes wide with horror.

"I'm going up to see if she's still up there," Zack calls after her, moving swiftly through the sea of transgenics trying to find their safe haven. He scans the crowd for Jondy's red hair – washed out, faded, but still red. He listens for Adam's baby talk, his happy giggles as he clings to his mama.

Nothing. Just transgenics with fear in there eyes, splattered with blood. Zack pauses for a second, wondering if he really wants to go out into the war zone to find bodies. Maybe not quite dead, just wounded, crying. He sees in that second, Jondy cradling her dying boy, her eyes wide and her face white. He can picture Adam tugging at his dead mother's clothes, willing her to take him somewhere safe and warm.

He can hear crying as he emerges on the surface. Crying and shouting and screaming. People are crowding around the gates of Terminal City, jeering at the transgenics running for cover, yelling for more blood, more corpses. A few guns are fired, and Zack crouches behind the rubble, trying to filter the chaos out.

The cry is thin, childish and it is that Zack focuses on, five hundred metres or so away. He briefly misses the days when Jondy's hair was so red, he could pick her a mile away. Now, it's pinned tightly to her head and much lighter than it used to be.

He's over there in a split second, his arms looping around her and their boy. Both their faces are covered in dirt, and there's a long cut from Jondy's temple, along her cheek bone and ending underneath her mouth, dried blood staining her throat, bruises darkening her left eye. Adam buries his face in his mama's sweatshirt, unharmed.

"You're okay," Zack breathes into her hair. He tries to wipe the cut on her face. "That's going to scar."

She offers a faint smile and unwittingly huddles against him as another explosion rocks Terminal City.

"Come on, Syl will stitch you up." He takes Adam from her, and wraps one arm around her, guiding her back to the camp.

Terminal City is still that night, the rubble casting strange shaped shadows everywhere. Underground, the wounded lie pale and wait as time crawls by, for sleep or death or some sort of conclusion to the worst day. They sit, somber, in their little camps, the soft conversations creating a hum that is usually cheerful; but not today.

Adam falls asleep in his mother's lap, bathed and in clean clothes, Jondy's fingers running through his blonde hair as he sleeps, his thumb in his mouth. The black stitches that edge her face are a harsh contrast to her pale face, a slap of reality.

"I want to get out of here, Zack," she says quietly, lifting Adam into his little bed, tucking his sheets around his small body, his stuffed giraffe under his little arm. "I want to leave."

Her eyes are sad and he knows she'll leave with or without his help. She's afraid and she's a mother, a powerful combination – a force to be reckoned with.

He kisses her forehead and wonders what it would be like, in Canada with Jondy and Adam, pretending again. Watching his son grow up relatively safe, in a country that's safer and no where near as desperate as America. They could end up dead, tortured, for trying to break out and become anonymous.

Zack wonders how he's going to tell Max he's taking Jondy and Adam, and they're leaving.

* * *


End file.
